LOST IN THE WOODS: The Real and Unreal Story of Bachelors Grove
A few remaining headstones huddle together at Bachelors Grove Cemetery (author’s photo)
One night, just before Halloween during my sophomore year at college, I and several others were gathered in a friend’s room in the underclassmen’s dormitory. It was 1987. Matt, a chemistry major with a personality and voice reminiscent of comedian Jim Carrey, was telling ghost stories. The lights in the room were off, and he held a lit Zippo lighter under his face as he told tales of his native Oak Lawn, one of many villages that make up Chicago’s south suburbs, and of the richly storied surrounding towns. It was on this night that I first heard of “Monk’s Castle,” the limestone church of St. James at Sag Bridge and its haunted burial ground; it was the first time I heard of the phantom hearse of Archer Woods, a black carriage driven by a team of mad horses. And it was the first time I heard of Bachelors Grove. 061
Matt told what I would come to discover is a classic tale of what he and others called “The Grove.” One night in high school, he and some friends had driven to Bachelors Grove to hike through the woods to the cemetery, which was a popular place for drinking, “making out” and general teenaged shenanigans.
The night was cold. Fall had come early, and the kids shuddered as they sat on crumbling tombstones, talking and sharing the cans of beer they had carried in their coat pockets. After some time, an eerie feeling came over them, as if they were being watched. Suddenly, a flashing blue light appeared through the trees. Expecting that the local police had discovered them in the preserve—off-limits after sundown—the three friends bolted down the path toward the adjacent creek, as the bridge that once spanned it was long gone: they could easily cross it on foot and find freedom in the woods beyond—and the path through to Ridgeland Avenue.
But as the young men sprinted across the creek bed, they were stunned to find that the flashing light had also crossed the creek bed—easily three feet below the road and along a path too narrow for a car—and was pursuing them into the forest. This was no police car. This was one of the many mysterious lights that had been reported at the Grove for at least thirty years.
Matt told us other stories of the Grove. The story of the Madonna in white who traversed the woods endlessly, in search of her baby. The story of the “magic house” that appeared and disappeared along the path to the cemetery. The story of the black cars and phantom dogs that silently stalked trespassers on the fabled cemetery grounds. With each word, I fell deeper under the spell that many well know.
As so many have come to find, Bachelors Grove had me at hello.
Truly, I could not get Bachelors Grove out of my head after that night. But though I had access to millions of books through our college interlibrary loan system, references to this compelling place in this pre-Internet world were scarce at best. I found a clipping of a yellowed Chicago Tribune article that interviewed Chicago’s “original ghost hunter,” the late Richard Crowe, who talked about a “dream house” that would appear and disappear in the woods around the cemetery. I found the wonderful book Psychic City: Chicago: Doorway to Another Dimension by the great Brad Steiger, and the classic Haunted Heartland by Beth Scott and Michael Norman. But that was all. As for going to the source? Without a car, and before suburban bus systems, Bachelors Grove might as well have been on the Moon.
Amazingly, that same year I met the man who introduced me to the science of parapsychology. Jim Houran was a student in psychology, and the department was allowing him to focus much of his studies on psi, or parapsychological research. It was through our friendship that I became a research assistant in parapsychological fieldwork and came to work on my first investigations into the paranormal. Some of these first investigations were at Bachelors Grove.
The very first of these was part of a series of experiments focused on the Grove: Are more anomalous photographs actually taken there than at other cemeteries? Are visitors predisposed to having anomalous experiences there because of the site’s notoriety? Are the electrical and magnetic fields at the site regulated by paranormal factors?
I will never forget my first visit to this place, walking the path through the woods to this lost little burial ground. Just inside the gate, which at the time was padlocked but with a human-size rip down it serving as an entry, in front of the stone marking the Moss family burials, a plastic doll’s hand had been stuck in the dirt, a cigarette held between its fingers, as if some long-dead resident was reaching up for an afternoon smoke.
The sight should have chilled me, and certainly I was appalled by this sacrilege. But there was something else, too, that came through.
“Hello!” this token seemed to say. “We’re here. We’re hanging out on this beautiful day. Come on in and get to know us.”
It was a gloriously sunny summer afternoon, and I saw what many still describe upon a first visit: an astoundingly magical place. I saw that the play of light in the cemetery is unusual and could certainly trick the eye and cause rampant simulacra to be created: Everywhere I looked, it seemed, there was a face on a tombstone, a pair of eyes in the bark of a tree, a child stepping through the grass. Most of all, I was overwhelmed by the feeling of peace that many visitors experience, and there was no way to reconcile my emotional response with the dreadful reputation of this site.
This was my first experience of the “moods” of Bachelors Grove that frequent visitors know very well. Like any living, breathing entity, the Grove is sometimes happy—and sometimes decidedly not. It sometimes shows itself and wants to play, and sometimes pulls the covers over its head until you leave. Sometimes, too, Bachelors Grove makes you leave.
During those first visits, nothing out of the ordinary happened to back up the extraordinary international fame of the site, though our photography experiments did suggest that more blacked-out or whited-out photographs did, in fact, seem to be produced there. The results of those experiments were eventually published in the Journal of Perceptual and Motor Skills and, to my knowledge, this remains some of the only academic research ever published about Bachelors Grove.
By the time of publication, Jim and I had long before graduated and parted ways, he into the world of academic clinical psychology and I into graduate studies in history. But I had not seen the last of Bachelors Grove. Over the next thirty years I would come to witness the many moods of this complex, elusive place, from kind to cutthroat. Though, thirty years later, I have—realizing its unpredictable power—sworn a hundred times to never go back, I expect I never will stop.
Variously called the “Most Haunted Cemetery in Chicago,” “The Most Haunted Place in Chicago” and even “The Most Haunted Cemetery on Earth,” Bachelors Grove has been both a mecca for ghost hunters and a thorn in the side of the county for generations. Part of the Rubio Woods Forest Preserve, the cemetery lurks in the forest across the road from the main preserve, set back from the road down a wooded dirt path a quarter of a mile off the Midlothian Turnpike near south suburban Midlothian. Dense woods border two opposing sides, a murky quarry pond the third, while the path into the cemetery completes the enclosure. The entrance to this path is "closed” off by a makeshift and worn chain fence weakly announcing this fact. Felled trees and branches have been placed by unknown hands to emphasize the warning, and often, construction crews working nearby piled their materials, equipment, and signs in front of the path as well.
Still, for everyone who knows where Bachelors Grove Cemetery is, it is an easy task to step around the warnings onto the path behind. Once on it, however, even the hardiest of souls half regret the trespass.
Though not silent because of the whoosh of nearby throughways, the path, the preserve, and the cemetery are their own world. The path back seems to create itself as you walk, like a lonely road in a Hawthorne tale. There’s a little black hole at the end that never entirely goes away, stretching it appears into eternity. Birds chirp and the trees rustle; it should be just a walk in the woods. Everyone on this path thinks of the sign blocking the entrance, though, and the wiser ones know the stories. So, there is the looking behind and around, and the wondering, especially about the flesh and-blood dangers of an isolated forest preserve. The mind becomes a mix of news flashes about found bodies, rumors of satanic sacrifice, memories of those urban folk legends associated with this place, and the fear of finding exactly what one is looking for: a place haunted, not by mere legend, but by inexplicable and notoriously disturbing phenomena. Somehow, one walks through the fear. Suddenly, the cemetery is there, and it's a long way back to the car.
To gain entrance, one must commit further trespass and step through one of the adequate holes in the padlocked gate.
Step inside.
On a sunlit day, the brilliance of light is almost blinding, white-washing the overgrown expanse of grass and wild flora, and tipping tree leaves with quick strokes of gold. Through another hole in the fence across the field, one may see the murky brown quarry pond, and in a far comer, the lush overgrowth of plant life. Squint and it's just a sad but peaceful place: a little cemetery abandoned by long-gone gardeners and uninterested or deceased relatives. But open your eyes. Beer cans and cases betray the recent visits by strangers, as they littered the path in. Rings of dirt and charred wood and ashes tell of impromptu bonfires of recent nights; a plastic doll's hand reaches up through a patch of grass, grasping a half-smoked cigarette. With the sun still shining and the wind still gently stirring the trees, the effect can be ghastly.
Many have described a classic sense of the chills upon entering the cemetery's confines. Others insist that the peace of the place persists despite the profane scatterings. The difference of opinion is at least partially due to the ever-changing atmosphere of the site. Though the area is, uncannily, always deserted, on each successive visit, one is guaranteed to witness a different state of disarray, evidence that many have come and gone, with purpose and familiarity, but without respect. The place may be almost free of debris, or it may be a mess of garbage. It may offer more macabre displays, like the aforementioned doll's hand reaching up from the grave for a smoke, or it may smell of extinguished fires and incense. Still, on rare days, Bachelors Grove looks for all the world like what it's supposed to be: an abandoned cemetery in a placid suburban preserve.
It is so not that.
In observing the site for inclusion in his 1978 volume, Weird America, Jim Brandon made the grand understatement that the place "has problems." Though the cemetery witnessed its last known burial in 1989, that of the ashes of a local resident, Robert Shields, the ground has hardly remained unbroken. Torn up for decades by both known and unknown hands, the grounds bear witness to a long history of desecration.
Bachelors Grove was first settled in the early 1830s, although larger numbers of immigrants arrived in the '30s and '40s. The first settlers, from New York, Vermont, and Connecticut, were of British descent, while the second wave were primarily Germanic and immigrated directly from Europe. According to Stephen H. Rexford, whose brother Norman was a founder of south suburban Blue Island, the Grove was named after he and three other single men settled the area around 1833, to perfect their titles to government land. Though the story has its charm, it is also more folklore than fact, as the name of the place already appeared on maps the year before Rexford even arrived in Chicago before heading out to this area. I fact, many variations on the "Bachelor" name are still in use, including Bachelder, Batchel, Bachellor, and even Berzel and Petzel, in addition to the more popular and proper designations of Batchelder and Batchelor.
Whatever the origin of the place name, the cemetery here was first called Everdon' s for the first purchasers of this land during the earliest public land sales. Everdon' s saw its first known burial in 1844 when Eliza-Scott was interred in the grove one November morning, though certainly earlier burials exist here, though unmarked. As the years passed, the 82 lots began to fill with some of the earliest settlers of Bremen Township, and eventually, their children.
In a 1977 article, Clarence Fulton, a descendent of one of these founding families, remembered the park-like atmosphere of the "old" Bachelors Grove, where families would picnic near the graves of their relatives and where fishing the quarry pond presented a peaceful diversion for area residents. Today, a visit to the cemetery brings on a confounding mix of emotions. Surprisingly, that sense of peaceful leisure remains part of the experience, at least for most visitors. But for many others, that small sense is overwhelmed by a distinct conviction of trespass. Of course, part of this comes from the seemingly deliberate attempts by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County to keep the curiosity-seekers, as well as the uninformed nature-walkers, away from the very real dangers of this unattended and isolated site.
Local opinion suggests that the closing of the Midlothian Turnpike in the 1960s not only blocked automobile access but ushered in the site's era of decay and haunting. Yet, according to Bettenhausen, the cemetery had by then already begun to attract local youth "as a lovers lane and for drinking parties." Regardless of the cause, by the late 1960s reports of vandalism at bachelor’s Grove began to spot local papers and eventually, even the Chicago Tribune. Characteristic of the mounting notoriety of the site was a September 1973 incident in which the local sheriffs police took seven teenagers into custody for digging up one of the cemetery's graves. Upon questioning, the vandals attested that they had been unearthing the site "as a lark."
By the early 1970s, the papers were rife with news of more unearthed graves, demolished tombstones, and what appeared to be evidence of satanic rituals. Brandon remarked that “the tombstones have been totally disarranged." Over the years, dozens of grave markers were dislodged from their places and thrown into the quarry pond or pilfered from the cemetery, only to show up in neighboring police stations in later years. Because of this and other elements of the cemetery's reputation, many of the bodies at bachelor’s Grove were moved to other cemeteries.
Whether the vandalism that peaked in the 1970s was a cause or effect of the cemetery’s notoriety remains a question for debate. Whether that damage was done for the sake of Satan or for the thrill of Saturday night also remains a mystery. What is certain, however, is that the physical state of the site primed it as a perfect canvas for the legends to come. In the space of two decades, Bachelors Grove took a profound aesthetic and cultural plunge. By the close of the 1970s, the site had been permanently established as "haunted."
Although both the well-documented vandalism and the less verifiable practice of ritual activity seem to have peaked in the '70s, neither has completely stopped. Even recently, one couple hiking in the cemetery told of a dog that had been found hanged in a forest tree several weeks earlier, and of finding on a regular basis other animal remains back in the woods behind the cemetery. They agreed with local belief that "a lot of weird stuff goes on there."
Of course, because of the site’s particular notoriety, it is impossible to ascertain how much of the phenomena connected with Bachelors Grove has actually been experienced, and how much has been "accumulated" or re-claimed by others over the years as their own. It is interesting, however, that most of the reported phenomena is relatively unusual, with rare exceptions. The area's most peculiar phenomena, and incidentally, the most credible, are wholly unrelated to humans or human events.
Certainly, if one inexplicable phenomenon can be said to "belong" to Bachelors Grove, it is that of the "vanishing house." This "floating house,” “dream house,” or "magic house," as it has been variously called, has been described by more than a few visitors to Bachelors Grove. One researcher has collected about a dozen drawings of the phantom house. Reportedly, all are nearly identical, though drawn by various people, of varying ages, and spanning several decades. These depictions portray a two-story Victorian home with a swing on a colonnaded porch. Through elaborate draperies, a trace of dim light seeps into the surrounding woods. There is no house on the property, nor anywhere near the site. No property records exist to suggest that there ever was.
Those who have seen this "house,” however, claim that it is as real as can be. Some have approached it, only to watch it shrink, becoming smaller and smaller and eventually vanishing altogether. So real is the vision of the dream house that many never realize it is not a "real" house until much later, perhaps on a return visit, from a local newspaper story, or to their horror and the guide's delight, on a "ghost tour." Some remain convinced of the reality of the house against all opponents, as did one woman who claimed to have seen the house herself, several years ago. In response to protestations that "there never was a house here," she adamantly maintained that "there used to be." Further, most anyone familiar with the area will offer to show you the foundations of a house that they claim did exist, and earnestly add that much of the grove's satanic ritual goes on right there, upon the foundation of this mystery house.
Local youth typically speak with great animation of Bachelors Grove and particularly of their late weekend drives there to drink and look for this "disappearing house," as they call it. Although mischievous kids who have searched for the house have rarely caught even a glimpse of it, many of them have been privy to another anomalous occurrence for which Bachelors Grove is notorious.
Once, around midnight, sometime in the 1980s, high schoolers gathered in the cemetery were startled by a flashing blue light through the trees and hurried to their cars, fleeing from what they naturally suspected to be the police. Though they heard no accompanying siren or car engine and wondered at the likelihood of a squad car driving through dense woods, they left the area for the evening, disappointed at the breakup of their eerie vigil. Later, they learned of a mysterious flashing blue orb that had been reported by many visitors to Bachelors Grove. The 1970s were rife with accounts of this blue orb, which were joined by those of a red light that would streak across the sky over the wooded path, and of white lights flashing around the cemetery, both night and day.
At once compelling and inexplicable, the Bachelors Grove "lights” seen in recent years nonetheless seem quite different from the "ghost lights" or "spook lights" that were reported here during the 1970s, and which are fairly widespread phenomena. In fact, they are almost wholly uncharacteristic of the description offered by experts on the subject. "Traditional” ghost lights appear to be actual red or yellowish-white balls of light that suddenly appear, usually move toward the viewer, and just as suddenly "wink out." Overwhelmingly, they are quite visible to the photographer and her camera. Quite to the contrary, the recently reported bachelor’s Grove "lights" only appear on film, after development, and usually question the very categorization of "lights." The "white lights" appear semi-opaque, almost as tangible objects; the blue orb has appeared as an arc of blue wash over part of a landscape. Interestingly, the red streaking lights were actually viewed, though not photographed, in recent years, as a sort of after-effect following an apparition of a yellow-hued human form.
Of course, Bachelors Grove has its share of "real” ghosts, too (i.e., aside from ghost lights). The cemetery has its version of a "White Lady," alternately named by storytellers as "Mrs. Rogers" or "The Madonna of bachelor’s Grove," who is sometimes reported as walking through the woods with a baby in her arms. There have also been accounts of a two-headed man who rises out of the quarry pond, as well as of darkly-hooded figures who stand silently for a few moments and then vanish. One local resident claimed that a flurry of bats, completely invisible to his companions, flew into his face and disappeared. A Hammond, Indiana woman who grew up in nearby Posen reported having been startled by a figure in an overcoat that streaked past her on the wooded path and vanished. A phantom farmer with his plowhorse are reported to be the ghosts of a farmer and his animal who were plowing near the water in the late 19th century when the horse suddenly careened into the pond, drowning both of them.
Aside from Bachelors Grove's relatively unique phenomena, the "usual” occurrences are plentiful as well: cold spots that come and go, feelings of oppression or dread, the perception of negativity or “negative energy," the sensation of being stared at, and the occasional touch of unseen hands.
It has been suggested that the dumping of bodies in the pond during the gangster era may account for at least some of the inexplicable apparitions and activity at Bachelors Grove. Others have wondered if the satanic practices connected with the site are somehow responsible, particularly for the reported sightings of hooded figures on the property. Custom maintains that the site was once an Indian tribal ground. Perhaps the rituals enacted there, or the desecration of later years, might account for the remarkable psychic energy of this area.
Notwithstanding the bounty of theories, solutions to the puzzle of this place are sorely wanting, even by psychics. In the early '80s, a medium was brought to the site and communicated the vague message that at least some of those buried at bachelor’s Grove had to remain within its confines for a specific amount of time.
Because of the tremendous appeal of this cryptic site, only Heaven and the cemetery itself know just how many photographs have been shot on this single acre and in the surrounding woods. For many, such efforts have been remarkably successful. In fact, it would be unusual to shoot a full roll of even the poorest drugstore film at Bachelors Grove and attain no anomalous imprints. Photographs such as those taken in late winter of 1998 by Dave Black and Jason Nhyte of Chicago-based Supernatural Occurrence Studies depict images reminiscent of the old spiritualist photos of ectoplasm, emanating from the tombstones, seeming to take on almost human form. Such photos were taken when Dave Black experienced strange sensations described as a tingling chill that creeps throughout the body.
Some photos taken by Jason Nhyte actually depict the mist wrapped around Dave Black when these sensations were registered. Other interesting photographs have captured what seem to be faces, appearing briefly on the cemetery’s tombstones. Such photos, however, have normally been explained as "simulacra"-images that are found by the eye in random patterns. Though "tricks of the eye," such images can be disconcerting and those who claim to see them are often hard to dissuade from the conviction that they are authentic images of the deceased, of demons, or of other unknowns. One of the most controversial photos of the Grove was taken by the Ghost Research Society and clearly shows the figure of a woman clad in a diaphanous dress, sitting on a tombstone, looking out over the landscape. Though lovely to look at and exciting to ponder, the photo has often been dismissed as a double exposure.
The sheer variety and volume of the Bachelors Grove phenomena would be enough to account for its high ranking in the annals of parapsychology, ghost-hunting, and curiosity seeking; however, there are several elements involved in the "haunting" of Bachelors Grove that make it particularly engaging. One is the uniqueness of several of the phenomena involved, in particular, that of the "vanishing house" on the cemetery path. This phenomenon, a rarity even among the paranormal, has intrigued local residents and researchers since the 1950s. Another highly unusual Grove phenomena is the reporting of "phantom vehicles,” either moving or stationary, that have been sighted on the cemetery path or along the Midlothian Turnpike, only to vanish when they are passed by other drivers. One incidence occurred to a Mokena resident more than 11 years ago. According to Laura Cleveland's account:
It was about 5: 15 a.m. and it was snowing. I was driving to work ... west on the Midlothian Turnpike, approaching Ridgeland A venue. There was an old, black (big) car ahead of me. All of a sudden, the car disappeared.
Not surprisingly, Cleveland admits that she "didn't take that way again for a long time."
Added to such unusual phenomena, a second interesting aspect of the incidents at Bachelors Grove is that, with few exceptions, local lore does not connect them with verifiable historical events such as accidents, murders, or other past occurrences, although at least one legend does seem to be an attempt to rationalize the phenomenon of the vanishing house, and another, to explain both the haunting of the Grove and the origin of the (some say) misspelled place name "Bachelors Grove."
According to the first tale, the house in question did at one time exist. It was owned and occupied by the groundskeeper of the cemetery and his family and stood in the woods beyond the burial ground. Unfortunately, some evil intervention spoiled their happy arrangement, when "voices from the cemetery" began urging the groundskeeper to kill his family. Dutifully, he sharpened his ax, did the deed, and then hanged himself in a nearby tree. In other versions, the caretaker is a hunter living in the house, who goes berserk one day and shoots and guts a number of visitors to the Grove, hanging them like animal carcasses from the surrounding trees. Local kids will swear to these unwarranted stories and show skeptics the alleged foundation of the old house, back in the woods, where they claim satanic rituals still go on. Once again, although traces of such a foundation do seem to remain, there is no legal documentation of a home ever existing there.
The second of these tales is even less "historically” based, as it melts into other urban legends and exhibits motifs internationally common to vanishing hitchhiker stories. Jaime, a 14-year-old Midlothian resident, tells it well:
(T)he legend goes that a very beautiful woman who liked to dance and was relatively young was killed by decapitation, and her body was disposed of in bachelor’s Grove. After about two years' time, she began to rise from her grave and go to local dances, since her passion for dancing was so great. She always wore the same long white dress. At each auspicious occasion, she would meet some young man and stay with him for the entire event. At the end of the gala, she would always promise the young man that if he stuck with her, he would have a 'good time' (if you know what I mean). They would drive on into Bachelor's Grove, then a nameless grove of trees, and she would gruesomely murder the young man by decapitation. In doing this, she is trying to find the young man who killed her, and give him his feedback. For all the young men killed and never found again, the spot was named Bachelor's Grove.
As if an ax-murdering groundskeeper and a violently vengeful young woman weren't enough, local culture has gone on to further "prove" the haunting of the cemetery by associating the site with several localized versions of American urban folk legends. As is usual with such legends, local youth are convinced that certain of these tales do have an historical basis originating at Bachelors Grove.
Jan Harold Brunvand has written extensively about the endurance of folk legend even in our time. In the first volume of his series on urban folk legends, The Vanishing Hitchhiker, he recounts several versions of two very popular legends, those of "The Hook" and of "The Boyfriend’s Death." Although we find many local versions of each of these legends throughout current folklore, the kids of south suburban Chicago have managed to attribute both of them specifically to Bachelors Grove.
The legend of “The Hook” goes something like this: A young couple is parked off the road late at night, presumably holding hands. The music on the radio is interrupted for an urgent announcement: A maniac with a hooked hand has escaped from the local asylum and is on the loose and dangerous. Listeners are warned to keep inside and are notified that the maniac may be identified by the hook he wears in place of a missing hand. Frightened, the girl in the car convinces her boyfriend to take her home at once. Reluctantly, he agrees. Once at the girl’s house, the boyfriend exits the car to open the girl’s door for her. On the handle of the car is a bloodied hook. The couple had managed to drive away in the nick of time.
The second legend, that of "The Boyfriend's Death," occurs in an identical environment. A couple is parked off a road, but is definitely not just holding hands. The girl becomes resistant and forces her boyfriend away, demanding to be taken home at once. Again, he reluctantly agrees, but the car won't start. He tells the girl to remain in the car while he goes to try and flag down help on the road. The girl assents, begging him to hurry back. After he has been gone awhile, a rainstorm starts up. Her fear mounts as the wind starts blowing and tree branches scrape across the car roof. At last, the girl sees a police car pull up behind the car. Thinking her boyfriend has flagged down the police and asked them for a ride home, she eagerly gets out of the car and heads towards the squad car. One of the officers inside speedily jumps out and says, "Now, miss, just walk towards us, and whatever you do, don't look back."
Of course, she immediately turns around, only to see her boyfriend hanging upside down from a tree, his throat slit from ear to ear, with his fingernails scraping the car roof.
These gruesome tales, bad enough if they happened in some distant places are made downright devastating through localization. Such has been the case with bachelor’s Grove. Both events supposedly occurred on the path outside the cemetery "a while ago" according to local youth. Although the Bachelors Grove versions are classic, local culture has attempted to partially explain the haunting of the cemetery by expanding the role of the hooked maniac. Not only did the horrible event occur there "a while ago," but ever since, the cemetery has been haunted by the maniac's "Hooked Spirit."
It is difficult to date the origins of either the paranormal phenomena of Bachelors Grove or of the legends. The earliest recorded accounts of "The Hook” legend dates to 1960s Indiana, around the same time the tale of "The Boyfriend's Death" first circulated. Both legends, then, began a full decade after the "dream house" was first glimpsed among the trees off the Midlothian Turnpike. It was also by the 1950s, as one former Bridgeport resident recalls, that "no one would go out there because it was haunted, “a reputation based largely on reports of lights dancing around ... blue lights and white lights." By the time the Indiana rumors made it to southwest Chicago, there must have been enough of a stigma about this deteriorating graveyard and its attendant visions to make it a good home for wandering folk legends. It should at least be considered that local youth was-and is generally still, according to teenagers like Jaime-unfamiliar with the history of the place name of the cemetery and perhaps felt obliged to create or circulate "bachelor," or courtship-related urban legends with respect to the site.
Much later, after reports of other unusual phenomena began to circulate, and years after the urban legends had lost their initial spark, it would certainly have been an easy task for local culture to resurrect the old shock tales to account for some of the newly alleged occurrences. One might also wonder if local authorities intentionally perpetrate such tales, playing to local youth's enduring fascination with the Grove. Moreover, historians like Bettenhausen believe that a number of the supernatural tales associated with Bachelors Grove were merely fabricated by local ghosthunters eager to excite and impress audiences with their expertise regarding a lavishly haunted yet local site.
Today, Bachelors Grove Cemetery no longer draws the crowds it once did. On fine days, amateur ghosthunters come to snap Polaroids in hopes of capturing a frame or two of something unusual; autumn afternoons bring the casually curious, directed by Halloween newspaper features listing legendary haunted locations. And on summer nights, a few local kids still duck back into the woods to drink and talk and give each other the creeps. But as authorities and historians have coolly observed in recent years, this helpless little wasteland has little left to offer. The damage has been thoroughly done.